GoPro Hero3: Black Edition Camcorder Review

Video Sharpness

The Hero3: Black Edition has a completely new sensor compared to what GoPro included on the Hero2, so it's not surprising that the camcorder was able to improve the sharpness of its videos. What's truly interesting, though, is that the Hero3's high-res options—the 4K and 2.7K record modes—didn't really enhance sharpness levels. Those modes simply produced videos that are larger in size than a traditional 1920 x 1080 full HD image.

For regular 1920 x 1080 video, the Black Edition of the Hero3 managed a horizontal sharpness of 700 lw/ph and a vertical sharpness of 750 lw/ph. Both of these numbers represent a significant increase over the Hero2 (600 lw/ph horizontal, 575 lw/ph vertical). In the 2.7K record mode the sharpness levels barely budged, increasing to around 725 lw/ph horizontal and 800 lw/ph vertical. The 4K record mode showed the same sharpness levels as the 2.7K mode. So, it's not like these modes are capturing clearer images than the 1080p setting. But the 2.7K and 4K settings are recording physically larger videos than the 1080p mode. This lets you crop out portions of the 4K and 2.7K videos in order to create a 1080p video that has no loss in quality. More on how we test video sharpness.